For Tony Award nominees, the next 37 days will be the usual long slog of interviews, parties, nerves and anticipation. But for producers of the ceremony’s June 11 broadcast on CBS, the date carries a new cause for insomnia: Who will write the thing?
With the Writers Guild of America strike showing no signs of an immediate resolution, the organizations behind the Tonys – The American Theatre Wing, The Broadway League and exec producers White Cherry Entertainment – will have some decisions to make.
This year’s Tony nominations were announced Tuesday, the very same day the WGA went on strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). The latter organization includes, among its members, Paramount Global, owner of CBS and Paramount+, broadcast and streaming homes of the Tonys.
As of today, the Tonys are set to take place at the United Palace in New York City’s Washington Heights on Sunday, June 11, airing live on CBS and streaming live and on demand on Paramount+ from 8-11 PM ET/5-8 PM PT).
Without WGA members writing the introductions, the jokes and the seemingly off-the-cuff patter that fills space between performances, host Ariana DeBose and all of the as-yet-unnamed presenters would be left to their own devices and improv skills.
That’s assuming, of course, that they’d be willing to cross any potential picket lines, or that the League and the Wing decide to go through with the ceremony as planned. Neither organization has yet commented on the strike’s potential impact, and a Tony spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. Though the organizers, including CBS, have not disclosed contingency plans, sources tell Deadline that the strike is top of mind.
Among other things, the strike raises questions about whether other theatrical guilds and unions would take part in the Tony broadcast. The New York City musicians union, AFM Local 80, has pledged solidarity, but Actors’ Equity has not yet made a statement.
Deadline has reached out to spokespersons for the Tony Awards, including the League and the Wing, as well as Equity, and will update this story if and when responses are made.
As of today, DeBose remains the ceremony’s host (her return to the gig after last year’s well-received performance was announced with considerable ballyhoo last month.) Another upcoming awards show, this Sunday’s MTV Movie & TV Awards, has announced that it will go on without a host after Drew Barrymore dropped out in support of the striking writers. The WGA plans to picket the show nonetheless.
The only other precedent for an awards ceremony taking place during a strike occurred back in 2008, when the Golden Globes, denied a WGA waiver, opted to downscale their typically raucous event to a simple press conference announcing winners. It is unknown at this point whether the Tony producers have sought a WGA waiver to stage the show with union writers, or, if they have, whether the union will grant such a request.
Without a waiver – or a quick end to the strike – Tony producers could be faced with limited options: Outright cancellation is highly unlikely, but postponement possibly less so. Even that prospect no doubt sends shivers up the back of an industry that remembers all too well the negative impact of the year-long Tony delay for shows that opened during the Covid-hit 2019-2020 season.
Some sort of scaled-back ceremony could be an option, something between the 2008 press conference Globes and a full-scale event.
But even a compromise like that could be detrimental for the Tonys and even Broadway itself. The coast-to-coast live event on network television is by far the industry’s biggest opportunity to promote itself, a three-hour-long entree into homes and viewing devices that, for staged theater, has no rival. Musicals make their cases for ticket sales with performances during the ceremony, and all Broadway productions, musicals and non-musical plays alike, use wins as advertising tools throughout the summer months and beyond.
“It’s a unicorn,” one insider said of Tonys’ unique nature.
The broadcast would be especially beneficial for musicals without big-name stars or recognizable brands, nominated shows like Shucked and Kimberly Akimbo that could make fine use of several nationwide minutes to sell themselves to tourists looking for directions. While it’s certainly possible that a writer-less Tony broadcast could happen – and perhaps even include more musical numbers than usual, given the extra time to fill – it’s hard to imagine what, exactly, it would look like. Or sound like.
